Sorry for being good.

The Japanese player Mochizuki is gradually proving that he can regularly compete with the top 100. All of it with exquisite Japanese politeness...

Alright, let’s start with Darderi here. The Italian used to be lousy on hard courts, but he’s improving. He’s got a good serve and a level of power many envy. His big flaw to me is his blunt-force brute side. His game is a bit one-dimensional, and he can get frustrated and lose his clear-headedness in the hot moments. I like it when conditions are slow for him—either because of the surface or the balls. He’s a beast who hits anything that moves, and the slower it is, the better his winners-to-unforced-errors ratio gets. At altitude, for his first match, I’m a bit worried, I’ll be honest. Especially against a clever, agile guy who mixes it up well and already has a match under his belt. Shintaro Mochizuki looks like a real trap here to me. The altitude could make up for his lack of power. And his net-oriented game is a potentially very good weapon against the aggressive baseliner Darderi—provided he can set it up properly, because Darderi is still a notch above in terms of average level, and his power could shut down any Japanese ambitions...